Lorde Gets Chatty about ‘Green Light’ Song & Video

Lorde has explained why her music video for “Green Light” is more youthful and spirited than her other clips, adding that she is more “playful” and “confrontational,” than she was when she was 16,” reports NME.

“I was very aware that this was the first thing that people had seen from me in three years,” Lorde said. “I was picking up where I left off.”

In addition to showing her age, Lorde wanted to depict herself as just another fan. “I always had dark lipstick on or had a weird outfit on,” she said. “This time I was like, ‘I want to look the way my friends see me,’ I feel like I want to be any of the young people who listen to my music.”

She added that the “Green Light” and its accompanying video are full of symbolism. “I knew that I wanted it to be set at night, like my real life – I’m wearing the shoes that I wear every night when I go out partying at home,” she said.

While she enjoyed making the video, she said that filming the clip was somewhat of a challenge. “It was actually quite difficult to dance on the roof of a suburban at three in the morning,” Lorde said. “It was a really cold night and it kept getting covered in dew. There was definitely a moment where I was like ‘cars were not built to have girls dancing around and losing their mind on top of them’. It was one of the strangest things I’ve done.”

As for the song itself, Lorde said it’s about “my first major heartbreak,” and admitted, “It’s not something that I really am used to writing about… It took me a while to be able to figure out how to write about that.”

She also talked about her collaborator Jack Antonoff’s participation, “It made a lot of sense for Jack to be in the room for the video. It wouldn’t have been right without him. It was very important. He needs to be in the universe of ‘Green Light’. The two of us are in the bathroom of a club, there’s an upright piano there, he’s there, and we’re playing. It’s very surreal.”

Lorde concluded that the track is “really special” and insisted it had to be since she couldn’t “sound the same as the old stuff.”